Fool's Gold
by Asphodelium
Summary: The tale of Jeremy Manson, his life, his struggles with his marriage and his daughter, from the perspective no one wants to hear it from - his own. Warnings for religious overtones, swearing and character death. In progress.


**Author's Notes:** I think this solidifies my 'rooting for the unliked character' complex. And I dislike just dismissing parents in cartoons as bad or obstructive forces. Human beings are not that black and white. They're complex. There's reasons for them to do what they do and feel how they feel. As much as the teen audience cheers Sam on for being the rebel, do we ever pause and ask if maybe the constant 'everything about you is awful' message might hurt her parents' feelings? Do we even pause to think they _have_ feelings?

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I've dyed my hair blonde since I was twelve years old.

It wasn't like we stayed in any one place long enough for anyone to notice. Not when my father had custody of me, no, we were always going somewhere for business' sake. Deals and openings and under the table talk took a lot of effort and I was just one more thing to pack up and move around. My mother would have taken custody of me if she could, but she couldn't, so I was packed and shipped all up and down the East Coast, and I knew two things: I did not want to be my father, and I wanted the suburban dream.

As my classmates rallied around music, decrying the suburban WASP dream, loathing the idea of nine to five jobs and identical houses, I was dreaming of those things. I tried not to pick at the ends of my frayed jeans and tried to calculate how long I could go before I absolutely had to ask my father for new clothes. As I pictured his screaming and outrage, his clenched fists and black hair slicked back like plastic, my stomach churned. So I thought instead about the future. I didn't care what I did so long as I could have my own house. No more apartment hopping and being afraid of what I was coming home to. Just a place for me and my family, where we would be safe and live in quiet.

Identical houses of suburbia... a perfect dream. Houses meant families and in my mind that meant mothers. I missed mine, but my father's lawyers had put a wall up she could never overcome. Unless my father died, she was stuck away from me. Devoid of siblings, I was a quiet kid, watching the world with envy so sharp it made me clutch at my stomach. Anytime I heard kids complain about their allowance or family photos or reunions I would swallow to keep down any anger. They deserved their lives. It wasn't right to be angry at them for it and I knew it, but envy isn't just anger, it's a hole where those things aren't in your own life. Pets, siblings, houses, eating dinner together, going to church together - anything that the other kids had, I wanted. I wanted with an empty hurt inside me that no one understood.

If they'd known I was the son of that rich jerk destroying the environment wherever his company went, it would've gotten worse, so I bleached my hair blonde when I was twelve. I liked the way it made me look, happier, brighter, I thought it hid the fact that some days just getting dressed sounded like more than I could handle. I thought it made me look like I had it together, so I took to it, made it a habit. I would dress nicely and I wouldn't swear and I would never watch horror movies, and I would become someone completely and utterly different from my father. I would never treat women as disposable things, I would find one and unlike him I'd always be there for her. Every time I bleached my hair I tallied up the list of things I would not do, if only to spite him.

That list was very long by the time I got to college to get my business degree. That was where I met a young redheaded girl named Pamela. She had taken up my ad for a room mate and arrived late at night, carrying two backpacks filled with everything she owned. She had a part time job on campus at the library. She could pay rent and although initially it was a challenge to get her eyes off the floor, we actually had a lot in common. We liked music from the 40's and 50's, we were both neat freaks, and our fathers hated us. In her case, she didn't know if her mother was even alive. She'd walked out when Pamela was four months old, and left to his own devices her father had etched out a meager living as an electrician. No penny was left unsaved; she had no toys or dresses growing up, and never owned anything that wasn't hand me down, hand out or from a thrift store.

She had views. She had morals. She had faith. She had just learned no one wanted to hear any of it so she'd withdrawn into herself, speaking just enough to get by through classes. Just like I'd learned to withdraw into books and old music and older movies, she'd learned how to hide in plain sight. The reason we opened up to each other was that we were both in pain. We both watched normal families at the park with barely held back tears and saw 50's sitcoms with the eyes of envious forgotten children of the 80's. We went to church together, we cleaned up our apartment, every windowsill had flowers on it and I made sure to siphon off enough money from my own part time job at the bookstore to buy her a dress. It was an awful attempt at romanticism, pink gigham print, sleeveless, a little too big, but she cried like I'd gotten her a dress made of diamonds.

It was three weeks left into our freshman year when my mother called to tell me my father had died. I had just finished touching up my hair, and Pamela had gotten used to the bleach stains enough she only sighed as she tied a towel around my neck and watched my reactions play out across my face. Somehow I cried like my best friend had died when he hadn't called since Christmas. Somehow I still loved him when I was never sure if that sentiment was returned. I couldn't ever recall the man hugging me or telling me he loved me, but I couldn't imagine that he was gone. Only at the end of the funeral, walking hand in hand with Pamela back towards the car, did I drop the bomb on her.

"He was richer than God. We'll never have to work a day in our lives now." I said it, and when I smiled I was crying, so she just squeezed my hand and smiled.

But the money did indeed come in, and I gracefully let one of his CEOs take over, took my share and we got our house. We got our perfect wedding in our church, she got a closetful of dresses, I finally got to see my mother on a regular basis when she accepted my invitation to live with us. We made a place where everything was warm and bright, where we didn't have to be afraid or alone. That pang of envy, that incredible pain where wholesomness had been prayed for, begged for and yearned for, it was gone. All we needed now was to have our own child, one who we could raise the way we never were. No thrift store overalls and city hopping for our baby. No waking up to Daddy doing or watching things young eyes shouldn't see. No penny pinching, no lack of toys. We were going to have our lives made whole with the missing piece to the suburban dream - a child.

She was born around nine at night, a four hour labor proceeding her, healthy and whole and slightly screaming when the nurse bothered her. Her eyes were shut and she fell asleep in her mother's arms instantly, our beautiful little girl, our piece of Heaven. Our dreams had been realized. I ran my hand through her tiny tuft of black hair and honestly didn't think of it as an omen. I named her Samantha because in a baby names book Pamela had skimmed, it meant 'heard from God', and I thought our prayers had been answered.

But this is real life, and there are no happy endings. No babies ever after. I thought my fight for happiness was over.

It had not yet begun.


End file.
